President [Noselaugh] Trump and the Question of Character
“It's demoralizing. It's unfair.”
Jan. 28, 2019, was her first day back at work in five weeks, yet the prospect of another shutdown loomed. A Sacramento TSA ...
Commentary
Michael Cohen’s verbal somersault
This article originally appeared in The Conversation on February 27, 2019.
Michael Cohen, who admits to lying, also says he’s not a liar.
Can we separate ...
What Can ‘The Favourite’ Tell Us about the Rhetoric of Queer Letters?
With the Academy Awards scheduled for this week, there’s plenty of buzz about “The Favourite.” It tops this year’s nominations (alongside “Roma”) with 10, recei...
One Rhetorician’s Read of Trump’s Second State of the Union
There are eight observations that really stood out to me, a communication scholar of over 40 years, in watching President Trump’s State of the Union address on ...
In Defense of an Open Society
The New York Times celebrated a new year by updating its archive of the people, places, and things insulted by President Trump on Twitter. High on that list was...
Government #ShutDown and Stasis
American public discourse has worked itself into knots again. Amid the recent government shutdown and deliberation over President Trump’s wall, we seem to have ...
Disrupting the Trump Monologue
Two weeks before Christmas, news audiences were treated to a rare spectacle in the Oval Office: a bickering debate between President Trump and the Democratic le...
If Dems are elected, they’ll do what we’ve been doing!
Recently, a common claim (what scholars of rhetoric would call a topos) has emerged among Trump and GOP media, and it goes like this: if Democrats gain the Hous...
We didn’t go to services
My wife and I didn’t go to services. We went to the planetarium instead. Before the Harry Potter-themed constellation show, a college student dressed as Dumbled...
An Ambivalent Lament for John McCain
At the 2000 Republican National Convention, John McCain gave a particularly somber speech. Quoting Tocqueville, he said he was, like all Americans, "haunted by ...